Anthony Martial’s Explosion Onto the World Football Stage in One Incredible Graph

On Saturday, Anthony Martial became an instant Old Trafford hero and gave Martin Tyler’s vocal cords a battering when he decided to do this…

On the same day, Cristiano Ronaldo scored FIVE goals against Espanyol, taking him past Raul to become Real Madrid’s all-time leading scorer in La Liga. Pretty momentous stuff.

But which player best captured the world’s imagination with their on-field antics at the weekend?

This graph, from Google Trends, shows both players experiencing a spike in search interest on September 12th, but it was Martial that made the biggest impact, with roughly double the number of searches compared with Ronaldo!

Right now, there are an amazing 8.5 million articles about Anthony Martial in Google News, compared to just 3.5m about Cristiano Ronaldo.

This lad has truly announced his arrival in the upper echelons of the game.

The pressure will continue to be immense, and we shouldn’t expect moments of magic like his goal against Liverpool every week, but all the signs suggest that Martial can handle the pressure of his position.